Unmasking the real Steve Bannon
Documentary maker’s take on populist former White House strategist draws mixed reaction and controversy
One day after the New Yorker cancelled Steve Bannon’s scheduled appearance at its festival, he found his way into another: the Venice Film Festival.
While he wasn’t a part of the official delegation, Bannon quietly swung by the world premiere of
American Dharma, acclaimed documentarian Errol Morris’ exploration of what makes the former White House strategist tick.
Variety reported “Bannon walked in through a side entrance just as the screening was about to start and sat in a balcony seat at the back”.
Critics of the New Yorker selecting Bannon as a headliner felt that, as
Washington Post columnist Margaret Sullivan put it, the public had heard enough from him “about his particular brand of populism, with its blatant overlay of white supremacy”.
Other scheduled participants — including Judd Apatow, Jim Carrey and John Mulaney — said they would pull out of events if Bannon remained a part of the festival.
The outrage eventually led editor David Remnick to rescind his invitation to Bannon, who told the New York Times Remnick “showed he was gutless when confronted by the howling online mob”.
The bulk of Morris’ documentary draws from a roughly 16-hour interview with Bannon. If you were to walk into the theatre “knowing nothing about Donald Trump’s former adviser (who he is, what he’s done, what he stands for), you’d probably find him to be a fascinating, American Dharma Owen Gleiberman compelling, and at times even charming figure,” Variety’s Owen Gleiberman wrote in his review.
“If that sounds like a swipe against the movie, it is.”
Gleiberman noted that Morris’ film does “offer glimpses of his misdeeds, like a machine-gun montage of racially inflammatory headlines from the Breitbart website”, which Bannon ran before joining Trump’s campaign.
But those headlines are “folded into a picture of Bannon as a man of ideas whose quest is rooted in his devotion to the good, solid workingclass people he came from.
“Is that really who Steve Bannon is? That’s certainly a part of him. Yet watching American Dharma, it’s hard to escape the feeling that Errol Morris got played.”
Bannon was “no raging firebreather” and was more “playing the role of alt-right Teddy bear”.
Morris did not dispute Bannon’s lies all that often, Gleiberman reported. The film-maker also hands the reins over by including Bannon’s commentary on clips from films he grew up with, such as Twelve O’Clock High and The Bridge on the River Kwai.
The Hollywood Reporter’s Deborah Young had a more favourable opinion of American Dharma, writing it “is meant to leave its audience shaken, whatever side they’re on”.
Young also wrote that the excerpts from classic movies “have a common refrain: A man’s gotta do what he’s gotta do to be a hero, and he has to recognise an urge to self-sacrifice as his personal ‘dharma’ — duty, fate, destiny and obligation”.
She felt one of the film’s final shots “is a metaphor of wanton destruction that leaves the viewer with goose bumps. If anyone has doubts about Morris’ own point of view, seeing that he never raises his voice to shout down his subject, this conclusive image should make it very clear where he’s at.”
The documentarian told the New York Times last month he made the movie to contribute something to the ongoing political debate. He said Bannon was willing to co-operate because he was a honey badger and “honey badgers don’t care,” referring to the viral meme.
At a news conference in Venice, the Hollywood Reporter said, Morris claimed he had faced “hostile press”.
He declined to comment on the New Yorker’s decision to give Bannon the boot, but, asked if his film granted Bannon an unwarranted platform, said: “If you’re telling me that this is so deeply bad or pernicious we shouldn’t talk about it at all, I say that’s nonsense talk.”
That’s certainly a part of him. Yet watching [the documentary], it’s hard to escape the feeling that Errol Morris got played.